Anyone go to the butchers?

[jonnie falafel]

Just discovered that my local butcher does MacSween Vegetarian Haggis & a couple of those cheatin meat substitutes. Weird I know. You won't be able to keep me out of there now.

[fiamma]

And your point is?

[cobweb]

sarcasm is the lowest form of wit, as they say.............

[missbettie]

*cough*

So i'm confused. If you went to a butcher shop and bought fake meat wouldn't it be contributing money to the butcher shop and thusly contributing money to the meat industry?

But on the other hand if you bought fake meat there then it would show that there is a demand for it and maybe some day in the far off future in Betty's perfect dream world there would be butcher shops and the only thing they would carry would be various kinds of mock meats, only they wouldn't be called butcher shops they would be called Shops of "Eternal Happiness".

I can dream. Don't mock me....no pun intended...

[seitan]

yeah, i think if people who are contemplating veg*nism, buy from the butchers, not so bad, but a vegan????

[harpy]

I would consider buying vegan stuff from a butcher in principle for the reason missbettie gives - to show that there's demand for it. In practice I'd probably be too squeamish to go in there.

[missbettie]

potato

[harpy]

.

[flying plum]

i would rather shop at a supermarket which just happened to sell meat because they are a supermarket and therefore, by their nature, kind of sell 'everything', rather than at a person who SPECIFICALLY deals in dead animals. i couldn't even bring myself to walk in there, frankly. the smell makes me retch.

but i guess they aren't a corporate place of doom, so i guess that makes them ok.

amanda

[Gorilla]

do i detect a whiff of troll here?!

[Zero]

You won't be able to keep me out of there now.

[Hemlock]

Just discovered that my local butcher does MacSween Vegetarian Haggis & a couple of those cheatin meat substitutes. Weird I know. You won't be able to keep me out of there now.

Wait for me, I'm joining the queue...........NOOOOOT

[seitan]

well, i find it VERY interesting that a butchers shop is now stocking vegetarian meats.

[helen105281]

I gag just walking past a butchers there is no way I would be able to set foot in the door.

[bryzee86]

Nuns!

[fiamma]

Nuns!

Huh??? *is confused* Did I miss something?

[Buddha Belly]

How do you discover a butcher sells vegan products? Window shopping?

[Buddha Belly]

Huh??? *is confused* Did I miss something?

i am too, glad you asked. I felt silly

[fiamma]

Probably when he moonlights as an undercover investigator for PETA.

[Buddha Belly]

is PETA too corporate?

[bryzee86]

Huh??? *is confused* Did I miss something?

I'm merely highlighting the absurdity of this Jonnie's threads' repetition.

[twinkle]

How do you discover a butcher sells vegan products? Window shopping?

I have actually seen a vegan haggis in a butchers window before now.

[Buddha Belly]

Has anyone tried it? Whats it like? We have seen it in our local health food shop.

[bryzee86]

How do you discover a butcher sells vegan products? Window shopping?

Jonnie refers to supermarkets as butchers. Geddit now?

[Buddha Belly]

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH HHHHh sorry am a bit slow at times.

[bryzee86]

Has anyone tried it? Whats it like? We have seen it in our local health food shop.

it is very nice indeed.

[twinkle]

Has anyone tried it? Whats it like? We have seen it in our local health food shop.

I've got friends who have tried it and say it's nice. I've never really fancied trying it, partly because I first saw it in a butchers, and have since learnt it's manufactured by a company that only seems to make haggis. They do seem to make quite a thing of the "much loved" vegetarian haggis on the front page of their website though, as well as the traditional haggises (haggi? not sure of the plural). http://www.macsween.co.uk/index.asp

[harpy]

I quite like the veggie haggises - certainly an improvement on the conventional kind which was . W**tr*se sometimes stock them around Burns' night.

[flying plum]

ooooooh, i see, bryzee. i was very slow on the uptake there. clearly i haven't read enough of mr. falafel's interesting and varied posts...

[fiamma]

I have a recipe for vegan haggis - very nice indeed

[cobweb]

ooooooh, i see, bryzee. i was very slow on the uptake there. clearly i haven't read enough of mr. falafel's interesting and varied posts...

lucky you

the vegan haggis is LOVELY by the way, it looks horrible uncooked (imo) but tastes beautiful with mashed neeps and tatties .

[Digital Ghost]

ooooooh, i see, bryzee. i was very slow on the uptake there. clearly i haven't read enough of mr. falafel's interesting and varied posts...

Your not missing much.

[jonnie falafel]

Your not missing much.

Poor me... cut to the quick. Ho hum. It's just a message board you know.

Anyhow on to the haggis. It's actually quite nice - sticky texture, peppery flavour and makes good sandwiches the day after. On the downside it's stodgy, very substantial and hard to finish in one sitting. Try it with mashed rutabaga & potato with lashings of onion gravy:

Gravy

A little oil
Finely chopped onion
Finely chopped garlic (i like loads!)
Tablespoon cornflour
About 300ml stock
Few splashes of tamari sauce or a little yeast extract


Heat the oil
Fry the onion until transluscent
Remove from heat & mix in flour to a paste
Gradually add stock mixing all the time
Return to heat and add tamari or yeast extract
Bring to boil until thick

[cobweb]

^ it's just a message board which many people enjoy using because of it's friendly atmosphere and diversity of topics.

[Zero]

Jonnie refers to supermarkets as butchers. Geddit now?

I don't think that was particularly obvious. Especially given that Jonnie is usually anti supermarkets and pro buy from you small independent stores it made more sense to me to think it was an actual butchers he was going to.

Oh well.

[bryzee86]

Yeah I thought that a first, then I thought about the other threads he's posted on (supermarlet deals, Morrison's etc) and figured he was trying to make a jibe at our alleged hypocrisy.

Korn's gonna have fun when he gets back

[cobweb]

well i am now a raving hypocrit because i am sick and tired of spending half my weekly budget on food and toiletries, and i am also sick of my 'local independant' charging over the odds for out of date produce (grr! )

hubby and i had a chat this morning about declining vitamin and nutrient levels in food, and food being flown across the world and also stored badly. We have decided we might aswell dine on the 'value' range crap from Tesco and Lidl, frozen veg, splash out on fresh juices, and take a good multi-vit . So that's what we're doing from now on (*shock horror* ).

[seitan]

i thought jonnie actually meant a real butchers.
i now find it quite funny how i, and others responded ha ha ha
im also, not actually sure why jonnie has upset people !

[jonnie falafel]

[quote=cobweb;519710]well i am now a raving hypocrit because i am sick and tired of spending half my weekly budget on food and toiletries, and i am also sick of my 'local independant' charging over the odds for out of date produce (grr! )
quote]

I can't say about your local independent (is there just the one?) but it's not generally true that they charge more than supermarkets. Supermarkets undercharge on a small range of what they refer to as 'known value items' this is the hook to get you in. Bread for example is often sold at below cost. Such practices are outlawed in Italy, Spain & France where the independent sector fares better.

Now if supermarkets undercharge, someone else is subsidising you & often it's the producers. Supermarkets 'externalise' their costs passing them back down the supply chain. This can have a direct impact on animal welfare as costs have to be cut... it also produces low wages, call off labour (where you work & earn at the beck and call of producers. Some weeks this means earning nothing). Often many producers just give up because they can't reduce prices further and make a living. This leads to further import and again impacts on animal welfare as they are transported across continents.... lets ignore the CO2 emissions!

Why is fair trade a great idea if it's supporting producers in the developing world, but can't be applied to our own producers?

I'm not calling anyone a hypocrite... We all do our bit in our own ways for people, animals and the planet. I just make a gentle, respectful plea for folks to consider the wider issues and imlications of how they behave. I hear people lament the loss of pubs, shops and specialist products like it has nothing to do with how they behaved.

Recently a few people have lamented the passing of a womens clothes shop in my town and when I ask "what did you buy there?" The penny drops with a resounding clang. At the end of the day it comes down to your vision for the society and the communities you live in. I don't want my choice to be between a dwindling number of homogenous transnationals. Anyone else joining the battle against the bland?

[cobweb]

I do get where you're coming from, i used to own a small shop myself .

However, the reality for me and many others, is that i simply can't afford to be choosy anymore .

For example, the same jar of peanut butter that costs 73p in Tesco would cost me £1.84 in my local independant (there's only really one in my town that is independant and sells veg*n items). There's quite a few items i have found with similar price differences. Also, because the turnover is slow in the independant there's a lot of stock which is either not kept very well or is out of date, and i have been caught out with that many a time .

Things have, unfortunately, been allowed to go this way over the years until small shops have a hell of time staying in business (we ran ours at a loss). Personally i wish for the days to come back when people grew a lot of their produce and had regular grocers vans visitng the villages every week. Just think, we could all save petrol and money, and packaging waste!.

Actually, that's the other plus about some supermarkets, they will deliver, which is surely a good thing? .

I think a lot of us here do agree with some of your sentiments but would rather you posted on some different topics now and again so we could get to know you a bit better. It's also not great to feel preached at.

[Mr Flibble]

I agree with the above, plus the fact that most independant stores don't open at useful times for people who work. 'Back in the day' a significant amount of people (generally but not always women) didn't work and could shop at such places, but now it's just not practical for the majority.

Just to be slightly contraversial I used to know a local (), independant (), shop () that was owned by a vegan/non vegetarian couple. One half of it was a butchers, the other half was a very good health food shop with many vegan items I've never seen before/since. Very bizarre.

[Risker]

All the local independant shops around here charge more than the supermarkets and not just on a few key items, on the majority of items. One of the local independant shops around here sold fois gras, our supermarket never did that. Our local health food shop would not order vegan 'cheese' in for us but our supermarket sells it.

If people do not buy from your business, it is not the customers fault, it is the businesses fault for not offering what people want. If a supermarket can offer the same products as your shop then you need to diversify and find a gap in the market that isn't covered by the supermarket, don't blame the customers for your own failures.

[harpy]

I'm not particularly keen on supermarkets and chains myself, but we don't have a local independent health food shop. There was one on the corner of our street years ago where I used to spend a small fortune, but they got taken over by a chain, and I wasn't entirely surprised as the people in there couldn't have organised a p!ss-up in a brewery.

We do get stuff delivered from independent firms though some of them are rather unreliable (not our brilliant fruit and veg firm, Woodfield Organics, though - puff, puff, but they really are good if anyone's in SW London).

[Gorilla]

I just make a gentle, respectful plea for folks to consider the wider issues and imlications of how they behave.

how is making 42 posts all on pretty much the same subject gentle and respectful? as people have been pointing out to you, we all consider the wider issues of our actions. that often comes as part of being vegan. we're doing the best we can with what resources are available to us.

I hear people lament the loss of pubs, shops and specialist products like it has nothing to do with how they behaved.

i live in Brighton where we're very lucky to have a thriving veg*n community with independent veggie shops and cafes. and yet, some of these are still closing down despite people using them all the time. a cafe run by a couple of AR activists has just closed even though it was always busy at lunchtime. there are many more factors that affect a business than whether we try to shop locally or not.

[flying plum]

i too agree with a lot of what jonnie says, and i think it is evident that a lot of us do. here in zagreb, i use the health food shop (which is part of a chain of three...and presumably they want to grow...does that make it a corporate place of doom?) to buy things like tofu and tempeh because they ARE cheaper than the supermarket. i also use it to buy treats sometimes.

however, it's also all 'organic', and i really can't justify paying 30kn for the same bag of lentils that i could get in DM (german supermarket chain i think) for half the price. i do buy stuff from the market stalls, but i usually can't get to Dolac before it closes, so i'm limited to buying from the smaller one on the square where i work. i do buy my lunch time veggies and stuff from here as opposed to Konzum, mainly because it's nicer and the price isn't that much different, but often there are things i want to pick up on the way home for dinner, and by then all the markets are shut. so i'm stuff with the supermarket.

i love market shopping. i love the interaction with the stall holders and i like the produce - here it tends to be fresher and nicer. but it's not always easy to get there when i work from 9-6.

in the UK, there isn't really anywhere for me to get my fruit and veg. there is a small stall down in Balham, but they tend to get a bit overwhelmed (and frankly, pissed off) at my long list of different veggies, and i just can't get down there everyday. not to mention they're only open in the week, and if i work days, i can't get there. i refuse to shop at the farmer's market...it's so expensive, i couldn't possibly afford to do a week's shopping there. i used to buy my fruit and veg from a stall that was open on sundays, part of a co-op, but i don't think it operates anymore.

and as for basics...there isn't really an alternative than sainsbury's, or tescos (i draw the line at tescos...i refuse to give them my money). i buy some things from waitrose, but mainly things like pasta and rice and other staples come from the big evil corporate places of doom...

i do agree with the policy of shopping locally, but practically i can't always afford, or am not able to, do it. and lecturing people doesn't help, jonnie. we get the point, and a lot of us sympathise with your views, but it doesn't mean that it is always a practical choice for us.

i must confess that i love the idea of being able to toddle off to the market every morning, but i would probably lose my job...

amanda

[cobweb]

......also want to add that my local 'independant' isn't a health food store, it's an independant grocers and garden/pet suppliers. They sell local beef and crab meat, meat pates, and lots of other non-veg*n dog and human foods .

We do not have any sort of health food store here in Orkney, and most of the locally owned businesses specialise in local meat.cheese/wool. That's why i go to Tesco! .

I used to support the local Co-op store as it's slightly more 'ethical' but their prices are higher than Tesco and they have much less choice of vegan items.

[Corum]

I quite like the veggie haggises - certainly an improvement on the conventional kind which was . W**tr*se sometimes stock them around Burns' night.

What's wrong with Waitrose? I'd rather go there than Tesco! At least Waitrose is owned by its employees as part of the John Lewis Group and has a better ethical point of view.

Back on topic, I like the veggie haggises - haven't had one for a while. I might have to get one for later this year (now we've got a cooker again!).